001e e e uh if we could reconvene our meeting to open session the board has been an executive session since 6 o' to discuss a contractual matter three legal matters and the superintendent evaluation um please please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation God Justice uh introductions Dave h b Cado Jody Monroe Holly dball you MC John wson John MC Phillips and Lauren Grasso is unable to be here this evening um do we have any pig or Supa students visiting us tonight Full House welcome thanks for coming um your obligation is to stay until the meeting is over or 9:00 which everyone comes first um if we hit 9:00 we will take a break
002so that you guys can can leave um there are sign out sheets that are up here just make sure you sign out so you get credit for being here so you don't have to come again um though you're always more than welcome to join us uh first up is our approval of minutes it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the minutes from the January 22nd 2025 regular board meeting so Mo second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries uh item three meeting reports uh first is our superintendent report sure uh so I'll start with some student recognition we have some students here this evening who are poetry out loud winners so I'm going to ask Mr Ricker to come up and maybe tell you a
003little bit about poetry out loud and then we'll get to hear from our students good evening members of the board uh as you said my name is Andrew Rickards and on behalf of the English language arts department I want to tell you a little bit about poetry out loud so this was our eighth annual uh bchs poetry out loud competition which is a recitation contest which challenges students to memorize a poem and then breathe life into it in the form of their recitation so we had uh marvelous performance from 20 students grades 9 through 12 last month and uh we're allowed to send two students to the regional our two uh students tonight are our runnerup Kieran McNay and our BCS Champion Laurel mench I just want to mention that uh just last Friday they
004already represented us at that semi-final at Hudson Valley Community College there were 14 students from area schools uh you know in the capital region here and of the 14 students only five make it through to round three so they recite two poems separately and only those top scores are allowed into that final round and I'm very proud to say that both students made it into that final round on competition and so with us tonight I'll uh first introduce Junior Kieran McNay aie mandas by Percy Bish Shelly I met a traveler from an an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of Stone Stand in the desert near them on the sand half sunk a shattered Visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it sculpter well those
005passions read which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things and on the pedestal these words appear my name is aim mandus King of Kings look on my work ye Mighty and despair nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level Sands stretch far away thank you and now Junior Laurel MCH our school champion thoughtless cruelty by Charles Lamb there Robert you have killed that fly and should you thousand ages try the life you've taken to supply you could not do it you surely must have been devoid of thought and sense to have destroyed a thing which no way you annoyed you'll one day Ru it TW but a fly perhaps you'll say that's born in April dies in May that does but just learn to display his
006wings one minute and in the next is vanished quite a bird devours it in his flight or Comm a cold blast in the night there's no breath in it the bird but seeks his prop for food and Providence whose power endued that fly with life when it thinks good may justly take it but you have no excuses for it a Life by Nature Made so short less reason is that you for sport should shorter make it a fly a little thing you rate but Robert do not estimate a creatures Pain by small or great the greatest being can have but fers nerves and flesh and these the smallest ones possess although their frame and structure less Escape our seeing thank you so it was a very tight competition at that Regional and although they did
007not make it onto the state round they made us very very proud so I brought them here tonight hopefully to inspire future generations of poetry lovers in our community thank you very much great than you here any can we come on up and uh get a photo and get a pin do you want me and that J over side congratulations congratulations great job uh the next thing on my superintendent report is just to um highlight the governor obviously made the her proposal for budgeting purposes and I know uh a few things uh we were um happy at least that our foundation Aid stayed relatively stable uh we're looking at a relatively flat proposal um which given all of the discussions about Foundation Aid we were a little concerned that we perhaps would be down so
008as long as the legislature supports that we should be good uh there is some misinformation or I think some uh discussions about the governor proposed free breakfast and lunch for all students next year and so I have heard people thinking that's automatically happening it's actually a proposal underneath many other things in the budget process so that has to be vetted through um a lot of different people before that would go into place so we will have more information as the state budget process moves forward we'll provide updates as part of our budget process uh which we're uh doing a little review on tonight and and we'll kick off next time so I just wanted to let everyone know that what's out there right now are basically proposals and they still have to be vetted and
009ultimately approved so thank you and that's that's everything for my report toight anybody have questions on that for Jody thank you uh next up is our board report um you all should have gotten an email from nisba on January 29th um this Friday February 7th is their live virtual Capital conference um if you can register to be there to live for it or you can um it will be recorded and shared with members um next Wednesday February 12th is their Lobby day in Albany um if anyone is interested um the information again is in that email and if you can't find it for some reason um and would like to see it let me know and I can forward it to you um I am advised that this is national school counselors week um so
010on behalf of the board I just wanted to recognize all of the school counselors in all of our buildings for all of their hard work um and everything that they do um and I o wanted to recognize the runners from our cross country teams that carried the flame for the Empire State Winter Games uh down Delaware Avenue the other day um which was a fun event fun to see and then uh lastly um in case there's anybody is interested in checking it out um in honor of Black History Month um in Elm Park there is an accessible story Trail um that is up um to recognize uh celebrations this month um through the month of February anybody have anything else they want to shair go a couple things um it's probably been difficult to keep
011up with the flood of executive attempted orders recently but I know a couple of raised concerns in the community um two in particular there's been some concern about you know what happens if an ice agent turns up at school and we have really pretty clear good guidance from the district and from Bose's um unless there is a Judicial warrant then they have no right to enter right to anybody else if I turn up at school and say Hey I want to interrogate so and so kid I have no standing to do so they have no standing to do so all staff have been told very clearly look just say no call the superintendent call the attorneys um they will handle it for you the second thing one of the most recent was trying to prevent
012transgender students from participating in sports here the district has a pretty clear policy that just says no students can have gender identity and put hands of their choice that's reflected in New York state policy um the New York State Public High School autic Association says no students just say I'm going to participate in these sports that's my identity there's a Department of Education ruling that says the same thing there's a New York state law the 2019 um gender expression nondiscrimination act that says Noe you know trans People Are People G surprised they can participate in sports like anybody else so I think at least in New York and in Bethlehem we're in as good a shape as possible and should have fewer concerns maybe but that's the current standing any anything else I wanted to
013share okay uh next are our student reports um do we have anyone here from the high school student Senate and anybody from the Middle School okay um and then next is our presentation um and this evening we have our state of the schools address for 2025 uh good evening so this uh state of the schools uh also kind of kicks off our budget process uh as I mentioned earlier so tonight's agenda we will review the mission and core values of the district uh will'll provide an update on our strategic plan uh talk about our annual goals there's some followup on school safety um where we are with the capital project an overview of our enrollment projections and the budget development process so our strategic plan our original strategic plan I go back uh we implemented
014in 2019 and when we had covid things got a little delayed pushed back uh however it was time to reconvene a group of people to review our plan itself and how we measure um how we're doing on an annual basis uh so we had a group of people who came together a couple times uh to review our past strategic plan and then also to talk a little bit about the um the metrics that we use so in the the overall plan we have our academics and in this particular slide most of the content areas for academics character community and wellness really remain unchanged there were a few minor updates to some of the language some clarifications but this looks very much the same as our prior strategic plan with a few minor uh updates that
015the committee recommended so academics is on is not Chang we have objectives and then we have our major strategies under academics we also have character as one of our core values and we have student leadership trust respect inclusiveness and engagement again very minor changes uh to the language under character as well Community uh you will see when I get to the metrics and the data pieces we are um able to with a new uh approach to how we display our data to convey a little bit more information regarding community and wellness that we've not really been able to capture before again under Community we have communication participation Outreach Partnerships and stakeholders and very minor changes in the overall language uh regarding community and our final core value of Wellness uh since we implemented the the
016Strategic plan we actually have a wellness cabinet now which is evolved over the course of many years um to include things like health and sa Fitness both for students and staff Safety and Security social emotional learning and things such as that so the biggest change I want to highlight is the uh the one of the struggles we've had over the course of many years with the metrics is how to update our metrics how to actually show our information to the community with out just a chart in PDF versions of that so in looking at how some other districts had been looking at their data we uh found a dashboard that we liked we brought it to the committee we sent it out to the committee they provided some feedback on the information they thought would
017be relevant and we have this is not live this is basically part of the whole update um so I want to I think I have to you switch tools now and go into this maybe no trying to get [Music] here it's not letting me click on that thank you I have a backup plan um so this is the academic piece I want to show everyone first on the homepage this is where we have the district's mission statement to educate and prepare all students to reach their potential discover their purpose and be engaged Community citizens and then from there these are the slides I just showed you these would be housed on this main page for our core values with the academics and then objectives and the major strategies character community and wellness um then the
018indicators is the I very slow Mouse this isn't working for me Britney could you hit that the indicators thanks um so under academics this essentially took the that metric the chart we used to use and transfers it into a data dashboard that people can go into as as deep or not deep as they'd like like so if we look at the um re can you put on the region result which I think is the third one uh the advanced course workor sorry and go into view data on that so um you can either look at the front facing just the dashboard itself and if you're interested in actually looking at the data and the trends this goes back historically either by graph or if you go down into the table you can see the district
019and you can see the goal uh Brit if you can go back to the academics piece and go into the 912 proficiency master Mastery chart in this particular one you can see uh it's got all the different regions exams on there 9 through 12 and it's showing how the district does compare to the state in both proficiency and mastery the one thing that's nice about this if can you click on the US history and government example so this is nice tool because you can see where we stood with the district proficiency and then you can see that there was a decline in our Mastery rates but you can see that there was also a significant decline in the state with the line graph and that's the result of the exam changing that year so the
020nice thing about this on the the way that we were tracking the data you saw how the district was doing but you didn't necessarily have the comparison is how are we doing against the state or um cap region bosies or similar schools whatever we're measuring uh if you can go back to the indicators again so in our our strategic plan there if you could go down to character there are some things that we think are important to reflect in the dashboard itself but don't necessarily have great measures so under for example character recognition if you go into that little the little eye in the corner there it highlights all the different character recognition that each of our schools um do on a regular basis and we can update this as these change so people have
021an idea of what kinds of activities are happening related to character Ed but not necessarily everything everything doesn't have a number associated with it so I think that it's important to reflect that this is an important value as part of our plan and the goals but not everything does have a number if you go down to community this is one of the areas that we're able to really expand upon with a dashboard that shows some good historical information so for example if you can go to voter turnout for the view data piece yeah so this shows um our voter turnout and can you go to the isn't there a chart is there another chart on that or am I thinking of the different Oh either way this shows how many people showed up on an
022annual basis um and you can see there's different Trends and how the district compared again to the state in voter turnout and back to the indicators there was one other I wanted to highlight uh in community in the um facility use if you go to the view data uh tab there's two different ways to look at this so we have different groups of people who use our facilities so you can look at that in this form in regards to Group 1 2 3 and four or if the you select the other tab at the top facility usage by groups it shows you in a different way so the nice thing about this dashboard is it can be updated on a regular basis it shows the historical Trends but we're able to provide the most recent
023data in a very userfriendly way and if you just want to look at the original this dashboard here and see how is the district doing overall you can look at it on a very quick snapshot as well and Dave you wanted to mention one other thing about it that I forgot about the strategy slide on the what strategy slide yeah you're good for this one oh on the next yeah yeah can you hit the strategy slide this is where the goals are yeah I'll just explain a little bit so um um it's really important to kind of take a look at the legend at the top um because these are not true percentages they're just being used as sort of think of in terms of a gas tank in terms of where you are in
024a Continuum so 25% doesn't mean you're 25% of the way toward your goal it just means that it's in progress um 50% means moderately complete 75 nearly and 100% completed right so many of these goals really you're going to kind of live in that 25 to 50% range because there really is no end right like so provide train for X right you're never going to provide all of the necessary training particular like so if we're doing stuff with say the science of reading um in our new reading program and we're doing professional development with teachers like after two years we're not going to say okay we're done we're never going to offer professional development in this again so we're going to Market completed so some of these will sort of always live in that sort
025of in progress moderately complete realm because it's not something you you actually want to be completed because it's something that should be ongoing right so thanks I knew there was something to that so if you go down to goal one you can see we just did our midyear updates based on cultivating culturally responsive faculty staff and administration So based on those updates you can see that these areas have been updated to reflect some of the progress to date this year and that's how we're going to just do some ongoing metrics of um how we're doing on a regular basis so that's the the dashboard um again it's not live yet because we wanted to share this with the board as part of the Strategic Plan update and then uh once we're ready to go we
026would obviously launch this and um find a way to communicate out to the larger Community uh that this has been updated and where they can find the information so am I back on the PowerPoint okay okay so onto the annual goals um some of this I already touched upon uh the mission statement in our first goal of cultivating culturally responsive faculty staff and administration I want to just highlight a few of the uh pieces of information that we've done this year so far so all of our employees have completed the diversity Equity inclusion training um some of that through Vector and some of it was in person and all aids to students with disability School monitors and new AIDS are also tcis trained uh which is a great accomplishment um at this point in the
027year uh something new that our English Department had some professional development in which I thought was interesting to highlight is they participated in civil discourse training uh these teachers helped students establish and articulate Viewpoint diversity and the emphasis on respecting the Dignity of the individual uh so that was one of the things that they participated in uh the first half of the Year some of the curriculum reviews our K2 Arts curriculum is updated and uh reflects diversity of artists in music literature also we've been reviewing our high school Tech selection to increase representation of authors topics and erors and working to expand the library colle collection in languages other than English we also have building level Equity teams now established uh we also have a district level Equity team that meets on a larger scale
028a few times a year and the building representatives are part of that District Equity team the goal of uh the building teams is to work on individual programs and initiatives at each building level while the district Equity team is there to support uh those initiative is also to share information about what's happening across the district uh one of the areas related to this school also is in student leadership uh we have the ncbi program we started last year at the high school many high school students have participated that and become here leaders many of them went to the Middle School recently and did micro assemblies uh for the middle school students there was uh a survey that was done afterward uh asking the middle school students some information about uh how that program went and
029the results were very positive from the students about having the high school students uh go down and work with the middle school kids some pictures of some of the diversity activities the first half of the year our next goal is increasing academic rigor and accountability while also maximizing student social emotional growth and mental and physical health some highlights uh actually the board just heard a presentation on this um from Hamil about the wind time that is actually happening um to some degree at all of our buildings at different grade levels the goal of this is to differentiate instruction provide enrichment for students who need more enriching activities and provide uh extra support for students who need some extra support to make progress uh these groupings do change throughout the year so they're uh interacting with
030different students in their grade levels and across classrooms uh another thing that to highlight uh we have some adding some of different courses at the high school the board actually just approved this uh as part of the curriculum uh review process so some of the options in math for next year will be the uction to data science uh intermediate data analysis machine learning Basics and advanced topics in data science again this is all based on if students select them but these are new offerings to students for the coming year I thought this was uh a good thing to highlight I know Dave and his academic uh summary in the fall talks about the number of students who are involved in AP offerings and you can see that from 2022 to 2024 we've had significant gains
031in students who are not only just taking AP exam but um earning some pretty high achievements as far as AP Scholars with honors and with distinction so that's a great um that's great to see more students taking those courses that are available our final goal increasing Community engagement few things to highlight with this um so parent Square you know is relatively new you can see we almost have 100% 99.9% uh that we're able to reach for faculty staff uh and parents and Guardians we have so far to date this year over 4,000 total posts you can see that's a breakup by building on the different posts uh so we're able to get a lot of information out I think some people think maybe too much information at times and we also have the ability if
032you are not a parent or guardian or a staff member we also have a community group so this uh you can scan this or you can fill out a form to join our community groups uh if you want information from the district on a regular basis uh in the process currently one of the areas we identified was there were uh parents of special education students who wanted a parent group of some sort whether it was an organized parent group such as a PTA or just a general parent Ed uh parent group uh so there has been interest and their parents met with our new uh director special ed on January there is about my understanding of 25 to 30 parents who are interested in forming a special education PTA or PTO I know they've reached
033out to some of the existing ptas to find out how they go about organizing it uh and things such as that so they're still in the early planning phases uh but I expect that their goal is to have that in place um either for the spring or or likely the coming year depending on how long that process takes um just to highlight some District recognitions I know we talk about this in the academic updates but we have some really great accolades uh due to the results of many of our teachers and many of our students and families uh that we consistently perform very well um across schools not only in the state in the area but also across the country uh again just some more recognition from us news and World Report um again consistently
034our high school and schools across the district do very well I do want to provide a bit of a safety update uh so in the fall I think everyone remembers um some of the experiences we had and since that time we've established a committee that's been working on our after school school safety planning uh that's comprised of Administrators teachers coaches uh working with also um not only our own school but schools in the Suburban Council where we regularly travel for different activities and events our goal has been to not only develop some consistent plans um that our coaches and advisers will have for after school activities and evening activities but also the plans are have been shared with the Suburban Council not specific School plans but the templates so that everyone is using a similar
035model so when we go to example for gildin for activities we have kind of consistent language we're using and consistent protocols granted every school and Facilities is a little bit different but having some common understanding for the after school plans granted our schools are open a lot there's a lot of activity so it's hard to plan for everything but having some general procedures in place and plans that coaches and chaperon and adults can follow to direct students I think um we're in a much better place than we were back in September uh a couple things that are changing with safety uh one of the changes state Ed is recommending is some new language and new symbols so this is know the drill is the document we've been using for a number of years we are
036transitioning to some of the new or upd dated uh language and symbols that we'll be moving for um toward in the coming year um I also want to just highlight the capital projects uh we spent a lot of time the last couple of years talking about the project and how we're doing and we are uh pretty much wrapped up at this point uh so if you remember in the fall of 2021 2021 uh we started the 40 just over $40 million Capital project in a you remember we had to cut some things out and so we went back out and the community supported the 4.6 million to do the Middle School auditorium in a separate uh Bond so we did complete just about 200 Scopes meaning different elements all buildings across the district saw improvements
037and support the district's mission of the academics character community and wellness and just to highlight so hopefully everyone got to see the new Auditorium in the debut of Annie a few weeks ago uh this is a picture of the Middle School library that had again uh major renovation as part of this project and just some highlights these have all been shared I know over time but looking at some more welcoming spaces some more ADA Compliant uh part of all of our bonds has been safety to increase the entrances hardening at all of our buildings so those have been implemented and you can see more spaces that are flexible and more welcoming uh brighter learning spaces for our students and along with the bond we have here's a a snapshot of the history of the bond
038uh the last couple uh have been you know $30 million $40 million the one large one 93 million was actually when Eagle was constructed a number of years ago so this has a historical snapshot of the bonds that we've done over the course of years at least that we have records for um and the next phase of our future Bond starts with something called a building condition survey which is U just being completed by our Architects uh so this condition survey is required every five years by the New York State Department of Education the information that's gathered as part of the building condition survey has to be um reported in a site in state Ed and basically what we do is out of all of the items identified the needs are prioritized as low medium
039and high priority um by the um Architects by The District administration and and things that we had um for example in this past bond that we didn't um include would be moved to uh potentially a future Bond if we want to include that so the process and this is not an um the time frame for the next project this is just to give you an idea of timing so we're just finishing up the current building condition survey that'll be submitted to State Ed um and approved hopefully by the summer maybe before that uh for the coming year we would be looking at the building condition surveys the items there would be discussions with each of the buildings with the Board of Education and presentations and then we would decide what kind of next project do
040we want to consider what's a dollar amount what things are important to consider in the scope and then following that then we would decide when a vote would happen in the last one we did a fall vote it doesn't have to be it can be any time that makes the most sense usually the fall votes help because then we can get the information to stay Ed and get our schedule on track because most of the work obviously has to be done during the Summers when our schools are not quite as busy with all the activities um and on to enrollment uh we use the capital region Planning Commission we've been using them for a number of years to give us projections on enrollment they have been pretty spoton almost every year within sometimes one student
041it's pretty amazing uh so we have had a decline in enrollment uh since 20067 of about 20 just over 20% the next 5 years the total enroll is in expected to increase slightly not a lot 2.8% uh so we'll go from just over 4,000 students to probably uh just under 4,200 students uh so we expect some increases at the high school level um at the 1.8% a little at the middle school and then the largest increase at the elementary by about just under 3.7 or 4% so you can see the overall decline uh this went back even further you would see that I believe the height of the enrollment was around 2006 or 7 uh but you can see there's a a steady decline over the course of many years and flattening out in with
042a projection out to 201920 to um or 30 sorry to go up slightly and and roll but but nothing significant uh the information that's gathered is actually through the district birth data and you can see that that trend is very similar although it doesn't account for obviously people moving in or out of the district but uh that information has been fairly consistent over the course of many years we also look at and they also look as part of the report in housing and home sales are slow the number of existing homes in the district has slowed down over the last couple of years um there's also been fewer building permits issued in 2023 um both in the town of Bethlehem and the town of New Scotland and finally related to enrollment if you know anyone
043who has an incoming kindergarten student please have them register their children uh sooner rather than later uh that does help us with our enrollment projections the number of class sections we need it helps us with our budgeting so in March 1st is the deadline that guarantees them to have a spot in their home school if those numbers are capped then they would have to go to another school for their kindergarten year before returning the next year so uh the sooner the better for kindergarten registration and we did offer for the first time last year uh upk we had a partner with TSL Adventures on Delaware Avenue they currently serve 36 students so they have two sections of 18 students that's done through a lottery we do still have in the governor's proposal we have the
044same amount of funding available for the following for next year at $5,400 per student so we will be sending a request for proposals out again to see if we get any additional providers um TSL has uh may be interested in expanding I don't know if they have the space uh but we would love to be able to offer more spots for more students uh last year I believe we had almost 90 families who put in for the lottery um to um enter into upk and with only 36 spots obviously there was a lot of those who were not able to take advantage of that so that will be going out soon and finally leading into the budget and John's going to take this um over next week um balancing the budget is obviously important we
045want our expenses and revenues to be equal as we end our budget year and as we start we want to look at uh some of those factors to make sure we end up with a balance budget um for our budget history you can see over a 10-year average the budget increase has been just over 2% you can see there's some variations there but that averages out to 2.12% our tax levy history um has been an has had an average annual increase of 1.48 % and over it's been at or below the the tax cap meaning the maximum allowable that the district is able to go to for 10 of those years and just to remind everyone the tax levy is the amount of money the school district brings in based on property owners helping to
046fund the budget the tax rate is not finalized until the summer when the equalization rates are set and each of the towns are established so those are um estimated at the time of the budget development and then the tax cap is what I just mentioned the maximum allowable that the district is able to um go up to On Any Given year our BC voter turnout uh you can see has also been relatively consistent over many years we had um a couple higher years uh that first one is during covid when it was all mailin uh budget ballots which was um not fun I remember that um and also in 2022 when there was a a very tight School Board Race um during that time but other than that uh we've been hovering between 2700 to
0473,000 um voter turn voter people who turn out for the vote and it sounds low given the number of people who are eligible to come out and vote but if you look at how we stack up against other school districts uh some school districts who are much larger than us we actually have a very good turnout to support the District budget and I do think it's important as part of the budget to look at how we're doing on per pupil spending so we actually are below the Albany County per pupil spending this is a delayed it's from the New York State education department it's always a year lag um and well below the New York State average of just over 20 almost $27,000 per student and the same holds true for cost per pupil on
048Administration spending this is actually a comparison of Capitol region Bose schools which there are 24 of them and you can see Bethlehem is on the lower end of that spending per pupil for component districts and to wrap up the budget development process as we begin I mentioned last week or next week sorry John will kick off the budget process and we also will be presenting technology transportation and operations and maintenance the following meeting will be um providing an update on the instructional program and student Support Services as well as Athletics uh March 19th will be further discussions budget adoption uh if there's any changes throughout that as part of the state proposal for funding or any changes with Federal funding obviously that would be part of those presentations May 7th would be the budget hearing
049meet the candidates night if there are more than um the C more people running then available seats would be held May 14th and the vote dat is May 20th so that concludes the state of the schools know it's a lot of information but if you have any questions happy to answer them I'm sure there are questions if anyone needs a minute or they you want to go ahead first sure um the decline and you know there's been a small increase in enrollment we clearly have enough space to accommodate any foreseeable enoll too much um kind of okay so when when the pandemic happened we lowered our class sizes significantly because we had to since that time we haven't restored our class sizes to the levels they were pre pandemic so for example it wasn't um
050uncommon that for example fifth grade would have 28 students in them they most of those classes are 20 or below so if we saw a more significant increase in in our enrollment then we do have capacity but class size but class sizes would also have to increase as well yeah seems like the only thing that would really cause that would be if best L did build a bunch more houses correct yeah um have we had a decline in Staffing the parallel is that decline in enrollment so as we yes we've had um well if you go back many years uh when we had the recession we actually cut a lot of Staffing during that time and our enrollment decline had not we started to see a decline in enrollment but certainly not the extent of
051the enrollment decline so there was a lot of reductions there over time we've been uh not necessarily cutting staff and laying people off but as people retire or leave we haven't been filling some of those positions so last year for example we had three high school math positions that people retired from we didn't fill any of those positions so right three we didn't fill right so that's what we've we've been looking at is the numbers um trying to rightsize I guess the numbers with our enrollment um I uh I really like the Civil discourse training sounds like some of our English Department um participated in was that just for our at the high school level or is that high school and middle school it was just high school high school just High School um I'd
052be um curious to see kind of going forward sort of how that training then ends up playing out in in class sure yeah s to follow up with that at some point in the future um one thought I had with respect to parents square and our community members um and I we've probably done this before in the past but uh when we send out our budget newsletter uh later in the spring um I would just suggest maybe including that QR code on there um for people to um so they know if they want to sign up and sure participate yep um because they may not go to our website and find it any a question a couple uh a couple questions first of all I thought the dashboard was a really cool way to display
053a lot of complex information and to keep um and to keep Folks up to date so I just want to thank you for for moving that forward um two um just two things on that um I spun through it a little bit earlier but but not a ton but Dave to your point as you were talking about strategy and the percentage that is is there um that I it was it is not apparent if you're not if you're not on the inside it is not apparent that that yeah I know the Legend's at the top but people are going to just slide through that um I've reached out to the company um and for an enhancement and they said oh great idea but I'm going to have to keep pushing them we suggested like maybe
054color coding it or something that shows like you're progressing but it's not necessarily attaching a number to it the percent is kind ofing I mean it's mislead not not in an inferious way but it is it's misleading so thank you for following up on that I could see how people would be confused um and then the facility use that you pointed out that was really cool but that was another place where it's just like a little bit more info maybe I don't know that we need I don't know that we need to know the names of the groups but perhaps the types of you know what is type one the description for what's a group one group two what is a group one per I can we could probably put that right in the little
055information P that would be great because otherwise it's just like oh that's that's a nice donut um so uh so thank you um in other parts of the presentation I just really want to applaud um lift up what Holly was saying about the training and civil discourse and then also the the um District's continued commitment to inclusion and making sure that all of our students and all of our families feel welcome and uh and that they belong here and there's always always always more work to be done there um the commitment to moving forward is incredibly important and I I value that I want to thank you um and then my last kind of question around Universal prek um TSL this was our first time working with an outside partner do they will they then
056have to reapply during the RFP um we we talked about that we I think what we would do is just ask them to provide any updated information I mean providing they want to continue which I assume they do uh there would need to be just some update from them is as far as is their curriculum still the same because there's a piece of that is there any budgetary changes that they'd have to provide so I don't necessarily think they need to provide entire RFP like they had in the past since we already are partnering with them but they would need to provide us with some of the updated information that we would need for the coming year and then have we ever asked for feedback from um Community Partners about like the RFP itself if
057we're I I just I'm just curious ious if if um if providers who if there if there are other questions we could be asking that would pay a better picture or something right so we actually having gone through it and actually getting a partner who who was working with us now uh was very helpful in knowing some of the changes we needed to make with the RFP and what's required for reporting purposes in state Ed not only just from a programmatic standpoint but from also from a budgeting standpoint so we actually are making some changes with the RFP that will align more closely with what the reporting requirements are so I think that just us going through that process with them and they're new to upk as well so I guess it's been a good
058learning process or there's been some bumps in the road but ultimately I think we'll have a better RFP out this year that then provides us with better information that we can more easily transfer into what we're required to do that's great and then do you know um I think maybe this is a question for Holly do we have um upk conversation built into any of our forthcoming agendas or anything there were a couple questions that um that i' received that I'd love to that I could that I could send by email or whatever the the best way is to do it we don't have to take time tonight though um not at the moment um because we've got the budget um presentations coming up over the next number of meetings um but yeah maybe the
059um ask the questions maybe there's things that uh we could do during the superintendence report questions wonderful I'll send along questions thank you thank you thank you and I'll just circle back I did um if you click on the i in the facility the group the groups do show up they do thank you very much I didn't see that when I was moving through it thank you so we stay on the dashboard um just I know you it's not live now correct correct do you have a projected date when it's going to go well we wanted to share it with the board make sure you all were comfortable with it and then we'll come up with a plan I want to Circle back with the planning committee letting them know that we're moving forward with
060it and try to figure out the best way to get the information out to the community and and where where will be house just on the on the website it'll be from our website be able to get and that that'll be accessible to not just parents but to the general public correct yeah well I'll Echo Catherine's you know comments that it's I I thought quite impressive and there's a there's an impressive amount of information in there um I saw that you could even download looks like the raw data if you want to um which is you know which is a lot of information out there for the public so compliments on that that's all thank you yep thanks yeah I would say speak from the the strategic planning committee perspective I think that one of
061the things that seemed like it was the you know most appealing about that dashboard was just how much easier it is to read that grid of all of the data that had the dots on it and um I just think this way if you just want the overview you only have to see the front page and if you are somebody who wants to get into the nitty-gritty you can click on things and you can um go through it so um I'm sure that since we're just putting it up is there there might be additional questions like go hey we need a definition of this right um and that would just be something to keep an eye on con conceptually though I thought I thought it looked great great thank um I had just a couple
062quick questions on the safety part of the presentation one is um have all of our building entrances now are they all hardened no or Middle School in Glenmont Hamil um El well no elmir and Slinger lenss are done yeah they're all no they're all Harden yes that those were the hammock gr glont were the last two they were the last yes all right um and then with respect to the I was glad to see that uh we've been moving ahead with uh looking for a plan for our after school um uh safety and I'm assuming but I just want to just double check that we're also working with the police departments in the um different communities they're also aware right of what our what the different schools plans are right and First Responders like one
063of the um pieces of information that was shared in one of the meetings uh prior to this actually was um because we have so many fields particularly at the high school if there is an emergency and let's say an ambulance needs to be called it's just come to the high school and it might be a lot quicker if the field is out by our onm department that they go this way to get to let's say an emergency uh but we didn't have our Fields identified clearly so that's one of the pieces that we've been doing is to identify label them and then make sure First Responders have a map of those locations so if there is an emergency and we call we can say it's at field you know 3 and they know that that's
064out by om&m or closer to the track so which way they get there because I mean the reality is in an emergency situation uh you know minutes can matter so that's great thank you did you have a question have one for the uh National Coalition building Institute uh how many students had the opportunity to participate in that uh we had group of students there was a last year do we have about 40 or 50 students that participated and then the goal each year is to is kids graduate to get more students involved in that so then they can join and become you know peer leadership um and then going down to the Middle School the goal is to get them interested in wanting to be participants in that as they come up to the high
065school so yeah we have a good number of students now but I think 40 or 50 was the initial so we've maintain that number of students that's great thank any other questions for Jody okay okay thank you very much uh next is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item if we have any visitors who would like to address the board on an agenda item now would be the time to come to the microphone uh next item six action items a finance action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following Finance action items 1 through three second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries B Professional Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the
066following professional Personnel action items 1 through second uh any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries uh C support Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following support staff action items 1 through three so move second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries D other action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following action items one and two seconded uh any discussion all in favor I I any opposed any extensions that carries item seven recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item if we have any visitors who would like to address the board on a non-agenda item now would be the time to come to the microphone item eight future
067meetings and events um our next regular board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday February 26th um here at the high school anti anticipating an executive session at 600 and reconvening to open session at 7 um our meeting following that will be on Wednesday March 5th again anticipating executive session at 6 and reconvening to public session at 7 um and on Monday March 10th uh here in the district office at 6:00 we have our next policy committee meeting I seeing no need to go back into executive session could I have a motion to adjourn the meeting so move second all in favor I meeting adjourned not bad